Draft, not decision
The jobs AI does well
First drafts of emails, notes and reports. Summaries of long documents. Explaining a formula, a policy or a piece of jargon. Turning messy notes into a tidy list. Suggesting options you hadn't thought of. Rewording something for a different reader. All of these share one feature: you can see at a glance whether the result is any good.
The jobs it does badly
Anything where being wrong is expensive and hard to spot. Exact figures it hasn't been given, legal or HR judgements, facts about your company it can't see, and recent events it hasn't looked up. AI writes with the same confidence whether it is right or making something up, so fluency is not a sign of accuracy.
The jagged frontier
A 2023 field study with consultants at Boston Consulting Group found that AI raised the quality and speed of work on tasks inside its abilities, and made people more likely to get it wrong on a task just outside them. The line between the two isn't obvious from the outside. You learn where it runs for your own work by trying, checking, and keeping notes.
Draft, not decision
A simple rule covers most of this course: AI produces drafts, you make decisions. It can suggest the reply, the summary or the formula. You decide what gets sent, signed, filed or acted on, and your name stays on it. If you couldn't explain or defend a piece of work without the AI, it isn't ready to leave your desk.
List five things you did at work last week. Which would you happily hand a bright new colleague on their first day, and which would you check line by line?